Now we are just going into hypothetical territory, there are easily more scenario´s where melee are more fk’ed by a bad roll of grudemarks than these few caused by rampart. Its simply impossible for it not to be given that there are more versatile melee combinations that can screw over more teams.
Going into what if’s based on this or that with rampart involved? Sure it can be terrible for ranged, but the same can easily be done for many marks for melee too. And therefore the argument that rampart is particularly bad relatively does not hold at all.
Meta favors battle wiz, that´s the simple truth. She unarguably does the most by far for the least effort.
I saw a slayer with the boons for parrying + damage immunity on parry just absolutely tear through a stacked mino too, brought a tear to my eye. But he was a real beast of a dwarf.
Rampart is just one mark, and there is no single mark that entirely screws melee. Any mark that messes with melee can be combined with Rampart to further ruin your day.
Another thing to consider is that there often aren’t 1000 coins to fully upgrade both melee and ranged weapons. If you have to choose one, then it’s almost always better to choose melee and a melee class to go with it. Battle wiz is the only one I’d bank entirely on ranged.
On the contrary, melee, especially early on, can be hopelessly screwed by a number of marks. All rampart does is make it so your resident ranged who may or may not even be good against monsters with their ranged weapon, definitely gotta melee too.
You dont believe me? Try dealing with a shieldbreaker mino/spawn during a horde (common scenario) with just two people and see if it wont just tear those two apart in a minute.
“Edit”
A mighty crippling stormfiend is also an interesting experience, actually dying extremely fast from its fire is nearly as novel as it is terrible😂
gotta agree, if we talk, single mark, rampart does exactly nothing until you actually try to dmg the boss, it doesnt make the boss more lethal or hard to kite at all.
so given the scenario where there is alot going on, rampart is like one of the most desirable marks.
on the contrary shieldbraker makes a boss especially mino almost unkiteable, moreso with ping
Those anti-melee grudge marks might be game ender early on, but they’re doing when you do have some utility and everyone is able to share some of the aggro or get off some decent shots.
Rampart on its own isn’t a game-ender, and I was never arguing that, it’s more how awful it combines with boons that already make melee difficult.
If a ranged character is forced to use melee due to rampart, and then you got something like Cursed Aura, or Shieldbreaker, it’s game-over. Happened to me today with just one other player and a couple of bots. Rat ogre during horde with Cursed Aura and Rampart; another with Shieldbreaker and Rampart; in another we got a Crippling Stormfiend with Rampart. Combine almost any anti-melee mark with Rampart and they’re not so doable at all. You’ve got to have some major cheese tactic to take them on, or a stack of OP boons and traits.
The only other thing that gets close to being as cheesy garbage as Rampart is Regenerating.
I think it can still exist. Just change Rampart to an aura that only allows attacks within a certain ranged. (If you’re melee anyway this is irrelevant) But for ranged careers to make use of their skills, they’ll have to take the risk of facing a boss let alone getting close to utilize their particular ranged abilities.
On the off-topic, all the Bounty Hunters I have played with so far always go furiously melee and crack the bosses in the face with DOUBLE SHOTTED regardless of range because they tend to be Giga-Chads.
That´d be because its easier to hit something that occupies most of their screens XD
Taking long-range potshots with their ability is a testament of skill when successful but also prone to error and failure due to random movement and often wonky hitboxes.
as a bounty hunter main its definitely teammates that mess up head shots the most
and that doesn’t apply to melee careers how? if a horrible perk like shieldbraker is paired with another horrible melee perk, a melee career in almost all cases won’t be killing that thing, with the added drawback that most melee careers don’t have a ranged weapons capable of killing that boss due to ammo or even ranged access, while a ranged career will always have access to melee
your point is that rampart combines worse with different marks than other marks do,
i disagree
and your second point was that rampart is worse for ranged careers than
any of the melee marks is for melee marks, atleast so much so that it needs more attention than any other mark.
so no i wanst diverting the disccustion even if you want to claim that…
On 1, I think Rampart and Regeneration are the two worst for combining to make something atrocious, a close second would be Shield-Breaker.
On 2, no Rampart isn’t necessarily worse for ranged careers than melee curses are for melee careers; and not so much that it needs more attention than any other mark. Not sure where you got that idea.
Now the discussion is turning into, “which grudge marks are the worst” and while that is an interesting topic, the only reason I’m talking about how bad Rampart is, is because it is what the topic is about.
The point I was making earlier is that yes, Rampart is a bad idea for a grudge mark, that’s more or less subjective since it’s not necessarily a game-ender on its own, and there are some other broken combos. I do think it could be better implemented. I like the idea that it could be changed to allow ranged attacks made at very close range. Just put an aura circle around it in which ranged attacks count, and allow bombs to hurt rampart.
My big beef with Rampart is that it feels like a very blunt instrument that was targeted very directly at BH/engi/pyro, all of which were known to be big abusers of the various hilarious crit boons back when they weren’t weapon traits. But it was implemented without regard for how it screws over other careers like huntsman, waystalker, and any melee careers who get a bunch of ranged boons or buy a morgrim’s bomb.
And that’s not even going into how Rampart is affecting the usability of those careers now that the crit boons are basically gone. I’ve not seen a single pyromancer or engineer in CW since the Bel’akor update. It’s all BWs and GKs instead.
Personally I’d like to see Rampart reworked into a general anti-boss killer grudge mark. Give it something like, “Immune to critical hits, DoTs, and explosions.” That would affect all of the boss killing builds & careers more or less evenly and still mean that the best way to tangle with Rampart monsters would be good old fashioned headshots & dodge dancing.
while i like the idea of streamlining this for all careers, it sounds like something even more people would whine over because it would pair even worse with other marks…
People complain about all sorts of stupid things. That doesn’t mean that changes shouldn’t happen. See: all of the whinging about the sister/shade/moonfire reworks.
Currently, as it stands, there are no marks for stopping fire.
Chaos Spawn with Cursed Aura, Mighty, Rampart? Just keep it burning.
Minotaur with Unrelenting, Shield-Breaker, Rampart? Just keep it burning.
Stormfiend with Regeneration, Crippling, Rampart? Just keep it burning.
The idea that now ranged careers can help out with a Curse Aura + Rampart, but dot stacking is no longer viable, seems like swapping one mark for one that’s only slightly less bad, but still ruins a player’s BW builds.
I think it’d work nicely to kill two birds with one stone if we just had it take 1/3rd ranged, dot, and explosion damage. That way they are still options, but less cheesy for wiping out a monster’s health bar too fast. Could also just have it reduce the duration of dot, and have the ranged attacks only count within a melee radius.
Personally I’m 100% fine with certain builds being basically useless on a single grudge mark e.g. Famished Beam/Coru BW. That already occurs with stuff like shotguns on huntsman/RV after all as a consequence of player choice. Where Rampart crosses the line imo is that it affects entire careers.
Maybe my opinion of that would change if we could get some bloody nerfs for Sienna’s DoT nonsense, but I’m not sure about that.
